Certain environments present special problems in air cleaning and filtration. In particular, casinos contain large enclosed areas and typically do not have windows for exchanging stale air for fresh air. Furthermore, casino environments suffer from a high level of air contamination, namely sub-micron particles, tars and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) largely from cigarette smoke. As a result, casinos often have extensive heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) filtration systems with high-efficiency filters especially designed to remove such contaminants from casino air. Such filter systems often include large banks of active field polarized media air cleaners to remove sub-micron contaminants from the casino environment.
As a separate requirement, casino electronic gaming devices such as electronic slot machines require that air be circulated over the internal components primarily to dissipate heat and keep operational temperatures in acceptable ranges. Typically, electronic equipment cooling fans include an integrated filter. Existing filter/fan combinations for electronic gaming machines use fairly coarse filtration to capture only larger visible dust particles.